A long, protracted whistling carries through the forest as a lonesome bird sings a solitary song. Then, somewhere off in the distance, comes a response carried by the gentle winds of a contrastingly warm day. The wind softly moves through the woods on the outskirts of the world tree city, and it is lost in the chimes of work off in the distant forges like a glockenspiel.
The hammer strikes down against metal, the crack of a dragon’s gnashing maw filling the air as her small arms fly back and up into the air. Schtill’s revolver kicks with the force of a mule, the bullet hitting the target and shattering the glass bottle into countless pieces. A deafening echo is swallowed by the muffling, muting forest that takes any manner of sound and suffocates it. But not before terrifying the daylights out of the nearby birds and critters, who all scramble and scamper as they perhaps think their world is coming to an end. Schtill’s boots sink back into the damp grass as she holds herself firmly in position, fighting against the recoil crush that had just struck her body.
Fighting the revolver’s press to escape the grip of her hands firmly wrapped around it, Schtill forces it back down, lining it up with the next bottle, and fires again. The two of them are struggling with each other like two wrestling bodies, fighting for control over the other — one of them screaming and the other holding her lips tightly pursed as one new crack after the other rings out. By the time her finger wants to press the trigger a seventh time, there’s nothing left for her to take.
Panting, Schtill holds the revolver in her hands and then slowly starts to let them drop, looking at the shattered glass that covers the patchy soil of the forest clearing. One bottle of the six stands left over, her shot having missed it.
The elf catches her breath, opening the revolver’s cylinder before tilting the gun to let the spent casings fall out onto the grass. They’re still hot to the touch, so she’ll just pick them up in a minute. She learned that lesson already, as evidenced by the new scar on her palm that she added to her collection of many others.
Fishing through her pocket, Schtill takes out a handful of new rounds and loads them into the cylinder one after the other.
— Something rustles the bushes.
The elf spins, hitting the cylinder shut with her fist in a flash as she aims the gun that way, staring down the sight.
A little green blob pokes its head out of the shrubbery.
“…A slime…” mutters Schtill to herself, lowering the gun as she watches the monster. It’s a small thing, the size of a kickable ball, made out of a solidly gelatinous mass. Wobbling, wiggling, and jiggling, it flops its way out of the underbrush and slaps around the grass.
Slimes are interesting creatures. While they are technically monsters by definition and not animals, they exist naturally in the mesa here and there. Even in the before-times, humanity has always had a bit of a soft spot for them compared to other monsters, like goblins or harpies. This is probably because slimes are, well, cute.
— It slaps against a tree, jumping blindly and hitting it.
Weakly, it begins to slide down into a puddle of dejected goo at the base of the trunk.
Schtill kneels down, watching it. “No mice here, buddy,” says the elf quietly. The puddle on the ground bubbles and pulls itself together, reaching around itself with small globular extensions for a second before deciding on a new way to hop. Slimes don’t have eyes, ears, or anything like that. They hunt by sensing vibrations in their entirely liquid bodies. Once they find their prey, typically rude field mice, particularly dangerous flowers, or maybe even some freshly-fallen violent fruit, they’ll swallow it whole in their acidic mass, where the food begins to dissolve slowly. “I scared ‘em all off.”
The slime, having likely been attracted by the vibration of her shooting rather than being scared off like the other creatures of the forest, stiffens up as she talks. It catches the sound of her voice in its body. Words are just vibrations too, after all. Whether in the air or on the ground, slimes can feel things.
It flops toward her, menacingly drawing air into itself like an inflating balloon. Schtill watches, lifting an eyebrow, as the slime leaps a horrifying handful of inches with every predator-like bound. It stops a meter or so away from her, having filled itself with air and swelling up in size.
Quietly amused, Schtill blinks, slowly tilting her head as she watches the utterly terrifying display of the little slime, trying to establish dominance over the stranger in its territory by making itself look bigger than it really is.
“Oh no!” says the elf, feigning shock. “I surrender, Mr. Slime,” she says, tucking the revolver away into her leg holster as she stands back up again. The slime threateningly sways from side to side in the calm autumn wind, like a banner of war being held aloft a mighty ten inches off of the ground. “Here. Take this instead of me.”
The elf laughs, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a ration-bar, which she begins to crumble in one hand. Schtill drops the pieces onto the slime, watching as a ripple moves through it as the food makes contact. Then, curiously touching the crumbs on its own body with some extended goo, the slime begins to deflate as it absorbs the ration.
“Better you than me, though,” she jokes quietly, breaking off another piece of her ration. They’re standardized in size, but her body is much smaller than those of the majority, so it’s quite honestly too much food for her at times. Besides, they don’t exactly taste amazing, being made from an arcane process, Pilot taught them that she isn’t sure isn’t actually witchcraft. But it makes the wrapped bars last years, in theory, in well stored conditions. However, this comes at the cost of them tasting as if they had been aged that long, no matter when you eat them.
The slime, fully deflated now, begins to wiggle with a pulsating movement as she drops the rest of the bar on it.
She watches it wobble and wiggle and jiggle and do all manner of slimy things for a time with a content expression on her face before nodding to the creature once and walking off to get back to the library. Her break is about over.
Slimes, in the hearts of people, belong neither to the classification of monsters nor to animals. Sure, by definition, they are the former. However, in the day to day reality of many, they are not. They just are something that is different, yet appreciated nonetheless.
Schtill looks up toward the clouds as she walks back by herself, wondering if she’d like to be seen that way or not — different, but at least quietly appreciated.
The elf isn’t sure if life was more or less complicated before all of this began. Like with so many things in this strange day and age, it’s hard to say, really.
Stopping for a moment, she looks back at the little monster.
“Slimes…” she mutters to herself, wondering if she isn’t getting an idea.
The redevelopment of the city has been going extraordinarily well. There’s something about total destruction that makes rebuilding easier than if the place had been only slightly damaged. Perhaps it’s just an opportunity to start with a clean slate. Given the new water channels that are being run through the city, the surrounding houses have changed too. While previously, they had been mostly two-story buildings designed to house a couple of families and a business — given the mixed zoning of the central square area — now they are becoming somewhat taller. Most of the buildings sitting directly on the new river are three to four stories tall, made with the experience that came to the workers after the initial construction phase of the city’s growth. These new buildings, facing the waterfront, mostly each have small, individual lever and crane systems on their roofs that hang down over the water. These mechanisms are meant to allow easy unloading of goods from the water into the structures. In essence, this keeps the streets free of excess carriages and logistics traffic — allowing for less blockage during times of rapid defense, as most of the cargo transport is done over the water.
With the new tanks being fielded by the city’s defense and the increasing number of vehicles, every little bit of free room is more than needed.
Additionally, the increased height of the structures lining the city’s most critical roads is put to full use for more than just cargo logistics. All of them are adorned with an array of facades and elements that look deceptively decorative. However, upon further inspection, it can be seen that these are actually steel-filled protective walls for machine gun squads that can aim down toward the streets. The fortified bones of the houses, allowing for the additional weight of the cranes, is also strong enough to allow the mounting of stationary heavy emplacements on many of the rooftops, such as flak cannons or spotlights. Every element of the design is based around defense first, only barely managing to disguise this under the pageantry of arches and cosmetic elements of the facade.
Furthermore, given the internal devastation that had come from the city's designated safe zone — the cathedral — where most of the sick and infirm were housed during the invasion, new alternative emergency shelters are being made. All around the city, in between buildings, down in the sewers through metal doors, or as underground additions to existing complexes, new underground shelters are being made. In essence, these are bunkers, which are sealed with heavy metal doors that are engraved with all manner of protective sigils and warding. These will allow a zone of safety for the incapable of the city’s population, as well as offer points of retreat for the organized defense if they get overwhelmed in any specific area.
The local rat population finds themselves put to use, running organized test runs against these new bunkers, probing for weaknesses and ways inside that have been overlooked by the construction teams.
It’s better for a troop of soldiers to give up some ground and seal themselves in a protective bunker than to get overrun and killed for no reason. Able bodies are the world tree city’s most precious resource and one that isn’t able to be replenished quite so quickly, despite the best efforts of some of the local people, given the medical reports from the infirmaries around the region.
The bridges across the new and old rivers slowly become completed, being massive stone and brickwork constructions that look as if they will hold for generations to come — and they just might. As long as nobody detonates the self-destruction charges that have been embedded in each and every one of them, in case a scorched-ground strategy needs to be employed by the defenders. These charges will allow teams of combat engineers to selectively destroy the city’s bridges in the event of an enemy overwhelming the position, in order to reroute the flow of combat toward more favorable alleys and lanes.
In the old world, people would have marveled at the speed at which all of these things are erected out of rubble and ashes, which are swept away by mounds. However, in this new world full of heavy machinery and the full conscription of every able-bodied person in one form or another, things have a way of getting done very quickly. While there are some injuries, such as people getting cut on the spools of barbed wire they’re spreading around the city’s exterior in forest choke points or during the partial collapse of a watch-tower on the outskirts of the city, for the most part everything goes well.
Before the next invasion is halfway toward its arrival, the rebuilding of the city is done in a manner closely akin to fullness. People, having worked tirelessly for these many days, suddenly find themselves without tasks for the first time as a great pause is finally allowed — like the exhaling of a breath that had been held in too long.
And with this quiet, even if it is only for a few precious days, the whispers of culture — and, if one dares to say it — fun — begin to return to this new normal of life. An autumn festival is organized all along the waterfront of the city to celebrate the great, rare joy of finally having nothing to do and also having people around you with whom to share that nothingness.
